Saturday, April 15, 2006

The Angry Moonbats

Onwards, angry moonbats (liberals and lefties and other treasonous folk)! Our anger-dripping message has been heard by the wise and civil in the media. Indeed, our vitriol and hatred is running down the front page of today's Washington Post, in the form of a story about the angry left blogosphere. It's also an article by David Finkel about one blogger, Maryscott O'Connor, and not a bad one in some ways, except that it's told as a story which HAD to start "Once upon a time there was a country with very very angry lefty bloggers. Why were they so angry? Why did they swear so much? Could it be because of something very sad in their private lives? And what did the anger ever give them?"

In the angry life of Maryscott O'Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O'Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer.

Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day.

She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about Bush, whom she considers "malevolent," a "sociopath" and "the Antichrist"? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as "Satan," or about Karl Rove, "the devil"? Should it be about the "evil" Republican Party, or the "weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving" Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says "I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned"?

...

What's notable about this isn't only the level of anger but the direction from which it is coming. Not that long ago, it was the right that was angry and the left that was, at least comparatively, polite. But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about.

"Powerlessness" is O'Connor's explanation. "This is born of powerlessness."

To what, effect, though? Do the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos, who sign their comments with phrases such as "Anger is energy," accomplish anything other than talking among themselves? The founder of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, may have a wide enough reputation at this point to consult regularly with Democrats on Capitol Hill, but what about the heart and soul of Daily Kos, the other visitors, whose presence extends no further than what they read and write on the site?

How about the 125,000 or so daily visitors to Eschaton? Or the thousands who visit Rude Pundit, the Smirking Chimp or My Left Wing, which is O'Connor's Web site?

Put another way, can one person sitting alone in a living room, typing her fingertips numb on a keyboard, make a difference?

...

All of which O'Connor finds remarkable, especially when she considers her route to this point -- the complications of which are reflected in the items she keeps close at hand.

The cigarettes are because of a personality that she describes as compulsive.

The nonalcoholic beer is because for several years she drank to excess.

The note that says "Why am I/you here?" is because she is in constant search of an answer.

And the photo album is because of a 25-year-old Marine who died fighting in Vietnam three months before she was born, which she thinks helps explain the note, the alcohol, the cigarettes and the very first piece of writing she ever published online, a rant against the war in Iraq that began, "Every single millisecond of my life was directly affected by the nightmare that was Vietnam."

If you write a story in your head and then go out to seek the materials for that very story, well, you know what the result is going to be. And Finkel did have this story already sketched out when he contacted O'Connor. From her diary on Kos:

A week later, he was here in my living room. He sat on my couch and explained that he didn't yet know what he was going to write, didn't have in mind any angle. He did have a phrase weaving in and out of his mind: "The Angry Left." Apparently I am the Angry Left personified.

So that explains why nobody wants to write about me. I'm not angry enough. Well, fuckety-fuck!

But this part of Finkel's story is a good one, though underdeveloped:

What's notable about this isn't only the level of anger but the direction from which it is coming. Not that long ago, it was the right that was angry and the left that was, at least comparatively, polite. But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about.

Underdeveloped, I said. Let's develop it a little more. Note the first sentence, about all this rantin' and ravin' being notable because of the direction it's coming from: the left. Isn't it just so cute that the anger of the right doesn't deserve a front page article in the Washington Post, the noted liberal latte-sipping newspaper? The anger and viciousness of the right is...what? Invisible to the media, ignored in political commentary, forgiven in debates? Attributed to only a few fringe voices? Each of whom happens to have, say, a million listeners?

Maybe David Finkel never visited those very few wingnut blogs which allow comments. I'd recommend the Little Green Footballs for a taste of the tea-sipping civility of the right-wing. He may also not have come across the many and gloried wingnut trolls which stumble through the left blogosphere, leaking feces and vomit en route. Notice how civil I sound when I use words like "feces" and "vomit"? Have another cucumber sandwich.

Michael Savage calls illegal immigrants vermin. Ann Coulter advocates baseball bats as the medium of conversation with the Democrats. Rush Limbaugh sells anger and bitterness every single day. And their fans are not loving this anger and vitriol? Perhaps they all sit around, sipping Earl Gray with a dash of lemon, with the pinky finger elegantly curled, while occasionally muttering "Jolly good, my chap, jolly good".

So there is a subtext to this article, and the subtext is the unreasonableness of the uncouth left. Why would the Democratic party take the liberal and lefty blogreaders seriously when they have been shown to be foaming-at-the-mouth deranged haters? It is dangerous to touch such a group, unless they carry the honorable wingnut label, and it is much more prudent to ignore them. How about a crumpet with that bile, my dear?

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